Call Center Multilingual Training

The call center industry is one of the industries in the world that directly requires multilingual services because it serves markets from different nations, cultures and languages. Thus, many call center companies use their multilingual capability to distinguish themselves from other BPO companies and highlight their ability to provide service to a global market.

In the Philippines where the call center and BPO industry have boomed for the last 10 years, most call center companies serve English speaking markets from the US, Canada, UK and Australia. However, there are also call centers that provides services to countries with a different language such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish. Most Filipino call center agents that are hired to provide services in these particular languages are usually informally trained for such services. For instance, those hired as agents to serve Japanese and Arabic are former OFWs who have learned to speak the respective language. On the other hand, Filipino agents that provide services in Chinese are often Filipino Chinese while those provide Spanish are those who speak Spanish at home. Apparently, Chinese and Spanish are two languages that some Filipinos naturally speak.

For those interested in undergoing multilingual training to provide their services other than English, there are programs in universities as well as specialized language centers that provide such training. The University of the Philippines in Diliman for instance provides training in Spanish and Japanese communications. There is also the Asian Center for Foreign Languages which is located in 2502-B West Tower, Philippine Stock Exchange Centre (Tektite Tower) Exchange Road, Ortigas Center, Pasig City, that provides training for a host of international languages such as Arabic, Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese Mandarin and Fookien, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese and other local vernaculars such as Maranao, Maguindanao, Kapampangan, Ilocano, Tausug, and Cebuano, among others.